Also reflect on the fact that, as long as the linked article is, it's the first of five parts.
The Anosognosic’s Dilemma: Something’s Wrong but You’ll Never Know What It Is (Part 1)
DAVID DUNNING: Well, my specialty is decision-making. How well do people make the decisions they have to make in life? And I became very interested in judgments about the self, simply because, well, people tend to say things, whether it be in everyday life or in the lab, that just couldn’t possibly be true. And I became fascinated with that. Not just that people said these positive things about themselves, but they really, really believed them. Which led to my observation: if you’re incompetent, you can’t know you’re incompetent.
ERROL MORRIS: Why not?
DAVID DUNNING: If you knew it, you’d say, “Wait a minute. The decision I just made does not make much sense. I had better go and get some independent advice.” But when you’re incompetent, the skills you need to produce a right answer are exactly the skills you need to recognize what a right answer is. [P6: emphasis added.] In logical reasoning, in parenting, in management, problem solving, the skills you use to produce the right answer are exactly the same skills you use to evaluate the answer. And so we went on to see if this could possibly be true in many other areas. And to our astonishment, it was very, very true.
ERROL MORRIS: Many other areas?
DAVID DUNNING: If you look at our 1999 article, we measured skills where we had the right answers. Grammar, logic. And our test-subjects were all college students doing college student-type things. Presumably, they also should know whether or not they’re getting the right answers. And yet, we had these students who were doing badly in grammar, who didn’t know they were doing badly in grammar. We believed that they should know they were doing badly, and when they didn’t, that really surprised us.
ERROL MORRIS: The students that were unaware they were doing badly — in what sense? Were they truly oblivious? Were they self-deceived? Were they in denial? How would you describe it?
DAVID DUNNING: There have been many psychological studies that tell us what we see and what we hear is shaped by our preferences, our wishes, our fears, our desires and so forth. We literally see the world the way we want to see it. But the Dunning-Kruger effect suggests that there is a problem beyond that. Even if you are just the most honest, impartial person that you could be, you would still have a problem — namely, when your knowledge or expertise is imperfect, you really don’t know it. Left to your own devices, you just don’t know it. We’re not very good at knowing what we don’t know.
ERROL MORRIS: Knowing what you don’t know? Is this supposedly the hallmark of an intelligent person?
DAVID DUNNING: That’s absolutely right. It’s knowing that there are things you don’t know that you don’t know. [4] Donald Rumsfeld gave this speech about “unknown unknowns.” It goes something like this: “There are things we know we know about terrorism. There are things we know we don’t know. And there are things that are unknown unknowns. We don’t know that we don’t know.” He got a lot of grief for that. And I thought, “That’s the smartest and most modest thing I’ve heard in a year.”
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It goes something like this:
When I initially read what Rumsfield said I thought he made perfect sense. I was surprised at the time that so many people didn't understand that what he was saying is true. Then it hit me: Rumsfield is not a religious person and most of the people who heard or read about what he said are religious. When Christians say that God works in mysterious ways they don't mean that there are unknowns that are unknowable. Folks on the left, by and large, thought that Rumsfield was just trying to be inscrutable as a means to promote policies they (and I) disagree with with but I thought he was just stating the obvious.
I love this stuff, thanks
Weeks of beach reading, oh boy.
Several years ago, I got pointed to a minor subset of scholarly discussion about students who don't know they're incompetent. Important to note that the discussion wasn't general. It was not implying that our students are overall wallowing in incompetence. The first I saw was about the specific area of information literacy (I hang out with reference librarians) -- students self-reporting that they know how to do basic research when they really don't. I think this also happens in related areas of technology literacy, and we on the teaching side often exacerbate this. It's worse when older profs "assume" that undergrads can produce with technology just because they can consume.
Having read a little of
Having read a little of this, my question would be: how can an incompetent person be in the dark about their incompotence for long, in a working environment?
Failure at tasks and goals that one sets and pursues is the signal that one is not skilled enough or doesn't have the knowledge base required to perform. If one keeps failing, it should be obvious that something is wrong, and then efforts are made to correct the problem; if incompetence is the problem, then training/practice would be applied.
For one to be in constant denial about failure suggests a level of delusion not ordinarily present, IMO. So, I don't understand how any ordinary person can delude themselves for long about their incompetence.
That's why I mentioned
That's why I mentioned politics, education and race relations...three important areas where the feedback is delayed so long it can be entirely detached from the assumptions that guide one's decisions.
I see, well, IMO, that's why
I see, well, IMO, that's why having a strong cross-cultural network of colleagues and mentors is essential to success in these areas, and in business.
I think also, that a sort of inverse condition exists; I would love to see a study on this:
Americans have a blind spot to black achievement. Even given objective evidence, many people will subconsiously ignore it. Among black people, there is a common occurence of being in a meeting, making a statement and having it ignored, only to have someone make the exact same statement seconds later, and everyone acknowledges it (from talking with friends, this is very common). My first impulse was to think this is just rudeness, but lately, I have begun to think that some of our afflicted colleagues are incapable of seeing or hearing information that comes from a person they consider inferior.
In my work background, I can name a few instances where I was called a low performer with the evidence of the contrary in full view of everyone.
@keto
LOL! We have all been there before. I was given a performance appraisal once that was so off-the-wall that the attorney for the organization told the organization's leader that he could not defend it in court. It was so bad that it actually assigned responsibility to me for things that had been done prior to my being employed by the organization.
@ keto
I agree for the most part.
Now consider what it means that the vast majority of your fellow citizens do NOT have such and see no need for such due to their incompetence making them unaware of their incompetence.
Perhaps I should have included media...
XKCD sometimes synchronizes with my interests quite nicely...
Here's a bit of background
[Note: Below, w/ emphasis added by moi, is from 2002. The conversation hasn't changed much to this day. (It takes a while for librarians and technologists, like Middle East peace negotiators, to deliberate and agree on something.) The first article I ever read about this phenom was written in 2005. --ProfGeo]
Riding the Active Learning Wave: Problem-Based Learning as a Catalyst for Creating Faculty-Librarian Instructional Partnerships
Michael Fosmire
Science Librarian
Purdue University Libraries
fosmire@purdue.edu
and
Alexius Macklin
User Instruction Coordinator
Purdue University Libraries
alexius@purdue.edu
Abstract
With higher education shifting its emphasis from teaching to learning and inputs to outcomes, active learning techniques are gaining prominence. Research has shown that students learn better when they actively engage the course content, rather than passively absorb lecture material. However, many faculty are unsure of how to take advantage of these new techniques to improve the learning outcomes for their students. For one active learning technique, problem-based learning, librarians are well positioned to facilitate its adoption into course curriculum. In order to effect a high-quality problem-based learning experience, a true collaboration of efforts needs to take place between the subject faculty and librarian. In such a synergistic system, information skills are integrated directly into course content, while an engaging active learning experience for students is facilitated. This article describes the background and history of problem-based learning, explaining why information skills are an integral part of the technique. The authors then detail the experiences of librarians at Purdue University, both in forming collaborations with subject faculty, and in the development of problem-based learning instructional modules.
Introduction
Librarians face a constant struggle to convince students and subject faculty that information skills are important and needed by students. Recently, the editorial board of our campus newspaper provided an example of the typical thinking of undergraduate students. After running an article that found Purdue University's collections' size ranking at the bottom of the Big Ten, they wrote an editorial that opined, "To this we say: so what? When was the last time you went to the library to do research for a class project?" (Wakefield, et al. 2002). Their argument was that everything is available on the Internet, so we shouldn't worry about the libraries. At the same time, subject faculty complain that student papers continue to decline in quality, mainly due to an over-reliance on inappropriate Internet resources.
With the advances in search engine technology and the increased technology skills of undergraduates, it is easy to find "something" on the Internet to answer most any question. As Macklin (2002) posits, students believe they already possess information skills, when in fact, they may be functionally information illiterate (Majka 2001). That is, students can ostensibly find answers to simple information needs, but are unable to explore deeper concepts or determine if their answers are rigorous. Since students feel successful in answering simple questions, they don't believe they need information literacy instruction, and are consequently unmotivated to learn.
Conversely, faculty believe students have more skills than they actually do. Frequently one hears that student laziness is the root of the problem, rather than a lack of information skills. Faculty see that students have the information technology skills to use search engines, but are unaware of the subtle difference between information literacy competencies and information technology competencies.
Two examples of the best
Two examples of the best advice I've ever been told or came across in random reading - 1) Don't trust what you find online unless it's stringently sourced with verifiable offline citations. And 2) You never know what you don't know.
@ Pro6 - In regards to what thismeans in politics, education, and race relations, my initial reaction is that this explains a lot and actually confirms my suspicions that people don't know that they don't know. For a while, I was with Keto, and depending on the particular case, I'm still with Keto - but I suspect that most voting Americans, in regards to politics, and white Americans in regards to race, are stupid and further, too stupid to know they're stupid. But I rejected it because, first of all, as discussed in a previous thread, they do have access to accurate information. And second of all, I just couldn't accept that so many people could be very high functioning adults - ie, what we consider of average or above average intelligence - and still be soo stupid. But as it turns out, yep, they sure are!
@ ptcruiser - Please don't lump all Christians together. I understood what Rumsfield was saying even if I thought he was just saying it to excuse excessive military force. Also, what I mean by saying, "God works in mysterious ways" is that there are factors that we may not have been aware of are had access to. And lots of times, people only say that when referring to either something really good that happened unexpectantly or something really bad that happened. In the case that it's really good, it's a statement of praise; when it's really bad, it's an attempt to encourage. For example, before 2008, we could reassure each other about W with, "God works in mysterious ways." Then, for Obama to come out ahead? "God works in mysterious ways."
Hahaha! A bit of a joke, but I hope you get my general point.
@ profgeo - Wow! I was in the honors program in college - it's an "ivy league experience at a public university." Or something like that. Anyway, wow! I got a really great education! Maybe it's because I only had to do two actual research papers and the rest, I was expected to use class readings. Or maybe it's because I was too lazy or too arrogant to trust a website. But really. I should give my college administration a thank you card. I mean, I won't - but I maybe could.
@P6
Love the cartoon because it is so correctly on target.
@no1kstate
I wasn't.
He wasn't.
Yes, but the fact you believe God is playing a role implies that you don't believe there are any unknowns.
My own experience is that people use this phrase as a calmative to explain or rationalize bad things. When good things happen they consider it a blessing and generally say so.
When Christians say that God
If you're not lumping all Christians together, fair enough. But yeah, we do mean that there are unknown unknowns. Referencing God's omniscience doesn't negate that there are unknowns that are unknowable to me.
@no1kstate: yes, thank your college
I am finding that most students "know" from high school that they aren't supposed to use Wikipedia as more than a jump-off source, or use spurious Web sites at all, but a lot will try it anyway. Part of the game, I guess.
Over at racismreview, Joe, a
Over at racismreview, Joe, a professor at Texas A&M, in response to a comment a left, suggested that perhaps white Americans, by and large, are "too racist to realize they're racists."